At first, this seems to be the bog-standard "I built something that people said they want, but then they didn't buy it" post-mortem. However, dig deeper and you will be delighted by gems like these:
"This is a farce. Talking about tech and being on the Twitter make teachers look good to administrators and to the public. They can add “Technology Committee Member” to their resumes and congratulate themselves for being innovative. But using tech to do work requires a small minimum of effort and change, and any amount of these is too much for teachers."
"I didn’t realize there is a stigma amongst teachers—that they deeply resent having to spend money on their classrooms and careers. Many businesses, both online and off, have special discounts and freebies for teachers. This has warped teachers’ sense of value and fostered a sense of entitlement."
I applaud this subtle rhetorical device. The author understands that this readers may well be distracted by feelings of sympathy. So, he has carefully filled his post with nuggets like these so that we can focus on the substance of his post, rather than mawkish sentiments like: "How sad that a nice person can work hard for a year on a startup and not succeed".
The conflict that's weirdest for me is that he internally conflates mindshare, educational reform, etc with him earning cash money. It's as if he believed there was a direct correlation between his rising income and teachers' decreasing entitlement.
And now that he hasn't earned any significant cash, he can claim that teachers/education have a warped sense of value... right.
"This is a farce. Talking about tech and being on the Twitter make teachers look good to administrators and to the public. They can add “Technology Committee Member” to their resumes and congratulate themselves for being innovative. But using tech to do work requires a small minimum of effort and change, and any amount of these is too much for teachers."
"I didn’t realize there is a stigma amongst teachers—that they deeply resent having to spend money on their classrooms and careers. Many businesses, both online and off, have special discounts and freebies for teachers. This has warped teachers’ sense of value and fostered a sense of entitlement."
I applaud this subtle rhetorical device. The author understands that this readers may well be distracted by feelings of sympathy. So, he has carefully filled his post with nuggets like these so that we can focus on the substance of his post, rather than mawkish sentiments like: "How sad that a nice person can work hard for a year on a startup and not succeed".